Come Back
by the-speed-reader
Summary: Ignoring the jolt that flickers beneath her ribs, Gogo stands and meets Tadashi's warm brown eyes as the boy adjusts the all-too familiar bag that seems to never leave his shoulder. "Hey," he greets with a quirk of a smile. "Still working?"
1. Come Back, Please

_This ship hit me like a ton of bricks. Within two minutes of seeing Tadashi and Gogo I was already plotting out this little piece. That movie was really amazing; and this ship kills me. I was crying when Tadashi died (which is saying something, considering I never cry at movies) and I have been working on this for the last two hours since the movie ended._

_Enjoy I hope. There will be tears._

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><p>"<em>It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.<em>" -John Steinbeck

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><p>It rather late, GoGo knows, but she can't bring herself to go home; after the hundreds of hours she's put into the magnetic-levitation technology, it's almost ready to go. Her hands are steady as her fingers brush against the smooth surface of the mag-lev disk carefully, fitting it just into position —<p>

There's a sharp screech as the mag-lev disk clashes against the metal of the bike and GoGo swears, letting the dish slip from her hands and clatter to the floor. Closing her eyes, she forces herself to take a deep breath; there's no need to get upset, not at all. Only — there's a ball of energy sparking in her chest, forming a knot in her throat.

_Breathe, _GoGo tells herself, trying keeping her hands steady. _I'll get this right eventually. _

She opens her eyes again, adjusting once more to the sharp fluctuation of the fluorescent lights above her. Ignoring the sharp pain that flares up in her knee, she bends down, the pads of her gloves taking the disk into her hands once more.

Her ears perk as another sound appears; this one softer, lighter, with the soles of shoes clicking against the tile. GoGo turns her head sharply, gaze meeting one that she had seen often around the lab.

Ignoring the jolt that flickers beneath her ribs, GoGo stands and meets Tadashi's warm brown eyes as the boy adjusts the all-too familiar bag that seems to never leave his shoulder.

"Hey," he greets with a familiar quirk of a smile. "Still working?"

GoGo straightens fully, setting the meg-lab disk on the workbench beside her. She pulls her hands behind her back, her chest moving upward as she stretches, jacket moving slightly where it had been perched on her shoulders.

She hides her smirk when his pupils darken and fingernails clutch tighter around the leather strap of his bag. Nodding up at his tall figure, she lets a yawn escape from her lips.

"Late night," she replies shortly. Her head jerks towards the now-still movement of her bike. "Seems like I'll never get it done."

"You will," he encourages, smile seemingly a permanent fixture on his features. Tadashi slips the bag over his head and off his shoulder, letting it crumple to the ground. He takes a step closer; she doesn't move, only looking up at him with a quirk in her eyebrows as he comes towards her, swiping the disk from the bench as he does.

Tadashi forces the mag-lev dish back in her palms, his fingers brushing hers as he does so. She swallows, trying to ignore the flicker of heat that coils in her middle.

"Tadashi," she starts, but he shakes his head firmly, gaze lowering to meet hers.

"Don't give up," he states. "You'll get there."

She quirks her lips into a slight smile, adjusting her grip so it's a bit more firm on the object in her hands. "I try," she laughs, tilting her head at an angle. They're only a few inches apart now; the lights are still flickering above them, but the rest of the university has long since gone dark. In fact, as her eyes dart to the nearby numbers on the wall, she realizes that it's far past midnight.

Tadashi pulls back then with her hesitation, but she refuses to acknowledge the sinking feeling in her chest. Forcing a slight smile back onto her face, she steps back and blindly grasps the worn material of her backpack behind her, pulling it over her shoulder.

Meeting his gaze again, she takes a deep breath, ignoring the fluttering beneath her ribcage. "Ready?"

He nods, his smile dimming a little. She brushes past him, nudging her shoulder against his. She manages to keep pace with his long legs nearly the entire time, and as they excited the institute, the last of the lights flicker off, plunging them into near darkness.

Tadashi turns to her, the outline of his face visible against the moonlight. "How 'bout a drink?" he asks, hopefulness bleeding through his voice.

GoGo pauses, but only for a moment; it's dangerous to do this with him, she knows, but there's a slight brush of happiness that she hasn't felt in a while. She nods, meeting his smile with her own hesitant one.

"Okay."

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><p>She's drunk.<p>

_Very_ drunk.

GoGo hasn't been this drunk in a while, but it feels good; it feels amazing to have the world spinning and her inhibitions down, just enjoying the feelings of freedom. Only, the feeling of heat in her middle and her heart pounding hard against her ribs hasn't gone away. It's gotten stronger with each and every sip in fact, but she doesn't mind.

Tadashi's drunk too, just as drunk as her in fact, but they both seem to be holding their liquor rather well; she was surprised that he was keeping up with her, but he'd always been full of suprises. Sweet, tall, gorgeous —

She stumbles on a stray rock, a swear tumbling from her lips. A barking laugh escapes from his mouth, and she turns only to stick her tongue out. GoGo's aware enough to realize that they're only a few streets from her apartment and a few more from his aunt's house, but she can't bring herself to care. It's fun hanging out with him; while Honey is one of the only other girls in the "nerd" department, she's a bit of a loose screw. Tadashi knows her far better than the rest of the team and it's nice to have someone who had gone through what she had.

She'd lost her mom when she was almost ten; paired with an absent father, she'd grown up pray to the whims of her not-all-there grandmother, who had strictly told her that girls should in no way be involved in science.

"Hey," Tadashi whispers, hand falling onto her shoulder. She starts, gaze jerking up to meet his. "You okay?"

GoGo nods, smile quirking up to match his small one. "Just — just thinking, I guess."

He tilts his head to the side, hair flopping to the opposite side. Absentmindedly she reaches up, brushing the stray strand out of his eyes.

He's gone stock-still and she's frozen also, eyes locked and breathing barely there. This is the second time tonight they'd been in a position like this, but it seems different almost; her pulse speeds up as his own hand slips from her shoulder to her hips, fingers brushing at the bare-skin just underneath her tee.

_It's cold_, she thinks, but it's also not — it's firmly hot, his touch burning a trail of fire along her skin as she holds her breath, a lump in her throat.

And then he's lowering his lips to hers, kissing her hesitantly and powerfully all at once; she gasps as she pulls herself closer to him, her fingers shakily gripping the fabric of his jacket collar. His tongue flickers between her lips as she tilts her head for better access. She's trembling as she bites his lower lip, but he is too — her foot stumbles as they move to the side, letting the shadows slip over them as she's pressed against a brick wall, one of the many that decorate San Fransokyo's side streets.

It's a different feeling, kissing him; it's like nothing she's ever experienced before, hot and cold all at once, and she _likes _it. She honestly, _truly_ likes it — it's brilliant and spine-tingling and goosebump causing and she doesn't _want_ to stop.

But their lips break apart from each other suddenly, with his hand still stroking the soft skin beneath her shirt; he doesn't pull away, and neither does she.

"Tadashi," she gasps, the cold hitting her suddenly. "What — what're we doing?"

Something akin to hurt flashes over his eyes and he swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing. She's still pressed against the wall and he's still pressed against her, but she doesn't want to move; she doesn't want to do anything really but just be _near_ him, if that made any sense. It's an odd feeling.

"I don't know," he chokes out. "I don't—" he pulls one hand away from the back of her neck, running it nervously though his hair. Tadashi swallows again, his breaths coming faster than usual. "GoGo, I—"

"Tadashi," she interrupts him, voice low. A bit husky, if she'd say so herself. "Kiss me again."

His eyebrows shoot up as his eyes lock with hers, bewildered. "GoGo—"

She doesn't give him the chance though because she's jerking his head down to her level, pressing her lips firmly against his. GoGo teases her tongue between his lips, brushing it against the roof of his mouth; he's shuddering, so unlike the put-together Tadashi she's used to seeing every day. He tastes like alcohol and the hint of whisky as he kisses her back, tilting his head to the side and digging his fingers tightly against her hipbone. She hisses at him when Tadashi breaks away, but immediately arches herself against him as his lips attack her collarbone, nipping and pressing open-mouthed kisses there.

It feels right, and not much has felt right in her life.

When her head grows dizzy and she feels like she can't breathe, she pulls away; his brown eyes meet hers, and she lets out a low breath of air, bring her hand to his cheek.

"I don't regret this," she whispers, because really, what else is there to say?

_That was amazing. _

_I've never felt like this before._

_I think that I may be in love you._

"Neither do I," he murmurs back, pressing one last echoing kiss to her lips. "You're amazing, GoGo."

A breathy laugh escapes her mouth. "You're not so bad yourself, Tadashi."

He takes her hand in his, fingers linking together as if they always had.

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><p>They get two weeks: two weeks of pure bliss, of waking up with him curling closely beside her, of fiery kisses and whispered gestures.<p>

Then it all goes to hell because he's stupid and risky and only thinks of others above his own safety. She screams when the building explodes, his naming tearing from her lips, and she doesn't give a damn about herself. Tears are falling freely down her cheeks as the others surround her, distraught, but _they didn't know. _They never knew.

She holes up in her room for weeks after, refusing to step foot in the university. She can't bear to go and step foot in those halls where he'd walked, where he'd worked, where they'd come up with thousands of ideas for projects that would never be finished — never be started, for some of them. GoGo knows that Hiro is suffering too, but the thirteen-year-old boy hadn't known about her and his brother. It was too late now.

And when she's standing at his grave days after the funeral, all cried out, she feels like she can't _breathe _because her heart feels like it's shattered into a thousand pieces and her chest feels like it's cut in half, she can't help but think, _why_?

She never even told him she loved him.

GoGo chokes back a sob.

_Please come back, Tadashi. Please._

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><p><em>Well look, I'm crying again. Help.<em>


	2. You Aren't Coming Back, Are You?

So_ I got a brilliant request from _**Princess Noodle**_: you are amazing, by the way. You made my day with your review and because of that, I'm going to try and see where this story takes me. Thank you so much to you and to everyone who reviewed/favorited/followed the previous chapter. We've got to keep the Tadashi/GoGo fandom growing!_

_I saw the movie for the second time today; even though I knew it was coming, Tadashi's death **hurt **so badly. Why do these characters affect me so much?_

_Enjoy._

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><p>"<em>You will lose someone you can't live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through. It's like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.<em>" -Anne Lamott

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><p>She spends an awful amount of time tinkering in the lab.<p>

GoGo carefully ignores the pitiful, fleeting stares of the rest of the lab's occupants; it's harmful really, and only makes her feel ashamed. As if she should feel shameful for grieving. She'd never been good at emotions though and this time was no different.

It's like there's a heavy weight on her chest, just waiting to be lifted — only, it doesn't. It stays there for weeks on end until the weeks have trailed into months; in the end, it's been a total of nine months since she'd lost the only boy she'd ever loved.

GoGo couldn't get over it; not even when they'd caught the formerly-dead professor had she felt even the tiniest bit better. Of course, throwing a swift left hook towards his face helped a tiny bit, especially after the bruise had started to show after the man's days in prison. Tadashi had been avenged, yet she didn't feel _any_ better.

Toying with a mag-lev disk left idly on the desk, she pokes it lightly with her pinkie. That's the one thing she'd spent avoiding this whole time, instead choosing to throw herself into other pieces of work. GoGo couldn't do that; she couldn't just go and work on what Tadashi had last worked with her on. He'd helped her finally perfect the right combination in order to get the bike working, and she had only spent time on making it faster. She hadn't even _thanked_ him.

Ignoring the rising bile in her throat, she drops her head to the table as wetness forms in the backs of her eyes. After grieving for so long, she'd forgotten what it was like _not _to cry.

GoGo hears footsteps then, but she doesn't bother to lift her head. Whoever it is, they'll go away in a moment. They always do.

"GoGo?" she hears, soft and sweet. _Honey. _"Are you — sweetie, are you alright?"

Turning her head away from the oncoming noise, GoGo sniffles. "Go away, Honey," she snaps, squeezing her eyes shut. She won't cry in front of her teammates; she _can't_. That's just not her, and it's never _been _her. Tadashi was the only one who had ever seen her when she was — _broken_.

The footsteps still, but then there's a light hand on her shoulder. "No," Honey whispers. Her voice carries sadness too. "You're not. None of us are — but GoGo, we've _got _to move on. It's almost been a year."

GoGo snaps, throwing Honey's hand off of her. She whirls around, eyes boring into the other girl. "No," she hisses. "You can move on with your life, just go on and forget all about him, but I won't. I won't do that Honey, and you _know _that."

Honey blinks down at her, arms drawing together in a slightly clasped motion. "GoGo. _Please_."

"Go away, Honey," GoGo snaps back, bitter clearly present in her tone. There's a lump rising in her throat and her heart feels like it's being squeezed in two — she can't _breathe_.

The other girl straightens, her gaze meeting GoGo's own. "If you need anything," Honey murmurs, "I'm right here. Alright?"

GoGo expects to feel a rush of shame come over her; after all, Honey hadn't done anything wrong. She hadn't done anything but come to see if GoGo was hurt, and that wasn't a crime.

Instead, she feels nothing.

GoGo jabs a hand at her, turning her gaze away from the blonde. "Get out."

She doesn't bother to look as Honey walks away, and the quiet sound of the door slips shut not moments later.

GoGo presses one hand to her chest, feeling her heartbeat speed up beneath her fingertips; her eyes squeeze shut, bile rising once again in her throat. This time she doesn't stop it though, and falls to her knees as she vomits into one of the stray buckets the janitor had left behind.

_Everything hurts._

_Why does everything hurt?_

_Why did he have to go?_

_Why, Tadashi, why?_

When GoGo finishes she pulls back, leaning on her calves while wiping her mouth off with her forearm. Her breath probably stinks now, but she can't bring herself to care.

She _hates _him; she hates him for leaving her, for being reckless, for making her feel like this — she hates herself for even letting her fall that hard for him, for allowing him to tear down her walls brick by brick until she hardly didn't even know herself anymore.

When you grow up, no one ever tells you that the worst kind of pain isn't even physical; it's the type of pain that the people around you, the people you had grown to trust, could force on you.

GoGo leans her head back, feeling it hit sharp metal. She recoils immediately hand flying to the back of her head almost on instinct.

"_Ow_," she bites, air hissing between her teeth. GoGo rubs her slightly bruised skull, wincing as she feels a bump rising.

"I am Baymax," she hears all of a sudden, and her head jerks up. "On a scale of one to ten, how could you rate your pain?" Ten emotion icons pop up in front of her face as she seizes up the giant marshmallow/fighting robot/healthcare professional as he leans closer to her, dark eyes blinking down.

When she doesn't respond, mostly out of shock, he speaks again. "I will scan you now." There's a beeping, and her heart sinks when his head tilts. "You appear to be — sad."

GoGo feels the ache in her chest get worse. _Tadashi. Oh, Tadashi. _"Really," she mutters, looking up at the robot. "What gave you that impression?"

There's tears leaking down her cheeks now, but she doesn't care. She really doesn't. Besides, who's going to see her but a robot?

GoGo draws her knees up to her chest and link her arms around them, pressing her forehead to the soft spot right above her knee. What was that called? Tadashi would know what that was called.

There's a pair of arms around her then; warm arms, and none too hard either. It feels like she's being wrapped in a giant pillow and she presses her head against Baymax's arm, the ache in her chest loosening slightly.

"Thanks, Baymax," she whispers, taking a deep breath.

"You will be alright," the robot replies, drawing his head back so he can look down on her, padding his free hand lightly on top of her head. "Everything will be fine."

She gives him a small smile. "Thanks, buddy."

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><p><em>So, I gave some Baymax comfort + tears over Tadashi. This ship is killing me. Why do I always fall for the tragic ships?<em>


	3. Goodbye, My Love

_I guess this is a three-shot. I was thinking about going with the story arc of Tadashi not actually being dead, but not with this story. Maybe I'll write another one like that, but this isn't a story with a happy ending. To the people who are insane enough to follow me: I suck at writing happy endings. Happy endings aren't just real in my mind like tragedy is. _

_And that sounds horrible. Now then, I think this story might be done. It feels right, ending it with this scene. You'll see in a minute. _

_To _**Princess Noodle **_and _**WolvesandNutellaLover**: _You both are brilliant. Amazing. Both of your comments made me so happy, you guys have no idea. When someone takes the time out of their day to just say that they like my writing or my stories - it's shocking to me. Thank you, so, so much. _

_Enjoy - and cry._

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><p>"<em>Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.<em>" -Ann Landers

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><p>It's — <em>hard<em>, to move on, after all that's happened. After having everything torn away from her within a split second; she'd lost her mind, her _heart. _It's hard to recover from that.

Yet, slowly, GoGo does.

When she's standing at his grave on the one-year anniversary of his death, she's alone. Purposefully, of course. Hiro and his aunt had visited earlier while GoGo had lurked at the coffee place across the street. She hadn't wanted to see them, and they hadn't wanted to see her. GoGo still doesn't even know how much Tadashi's family had known about the two of them; after all, they had only been together for a few weeks before — before his death.

_It's cold, _she thinks, fingers clutching her sleeves as she wraps her leather jacket tighter around her upper body. It was a bad day to wear shorts. _Tadashi liked the cold._

He had — he really, _really_ had liked the bitterness of cold for some reason. GoGo remembered, before they were together, that he'd pull her out into the streets when it started to snow. She remembered those late, far past midnight phone calls that she'd gotten when the first few flakes had appeared in the air. Tadashi had called her any time of day or night; at first, she'd been annoyed, because who the hell called about _snow _in the dead of night?

Eventually though, she'd gotten used to those calls.

She'd gotten used to _him_.

Taking a deep breath, GoGo draws her lip between her teeth, trying to clamp down on the panicky feeling rising in her chest. She closes her eyes for a moment to try and gain her bearings, ignoring the nearby laughter of a children's schoolyard across the street.

She wants to laugh bitter at the irony. It'd been so long since she'd been a child.

Wiping an escaped tear off her cheek, she straightens and focuses her slightly blurry vision on the gravestone in front of her. When he'd first been buried, GoGo had thought that his tombstone — _that word, she hates that word _— had been a bit bland: nothing more than his name followed by date of birth and date of death.

Now, it seemed just as wrong. Tadashi wasn't _simple. _He was complex and wonderful and gorgeous in a thousand ways that people had never known. He had only wanted to _help _people. He was more than just a slab. That wasn't his legacy.

GoGo scruffs the dirt in front of the slab, her foot pressing down into the newly grown grass. The stone had weathered with time, but it wasn't damaged. It was in relatively good shape for being there for a year.

A _year_. It didn't feel like a year.

She still remembers that night, vividly. It appears in her nightmares, in her dreams — the flames, flickering over the building. Skidding around the corner only to watch as Tadashi rushes inside, Hiro begging him to stop.

GoGo hadn't been fast enough. She couldn't stopped him.

_She hadn't been fast enough._

Ironic, considering her choice of weaponry.

Swallowing thickly, GoGo tries to still her shaking hands. She's healing, but it's a slow process. All those nights ago, when Honey had come to her, begged her to move on, she couldn't then. She hadn't been ready.

Now, she was.

Taking another deep breath — it seems like she'd taken far too many of them in the past months, trying to keep from breaking down every moment, every second of the day — GoGo focuses her eyes on Tadashi's name bolded on the stone.

"Tadashi," she whispers, voice slipping away with the wind. "You're gone. I know you're done. I keep looking for you at the lab and seeing you out of the corner of my eye. I keep expecting you to show up at my apartment every morning to pick me up in that crappy car of yours — and don't you dare deny it's crappy, because that thing is just a complete piece of junk."

GoGo sniffles, looking at the sky for a moment before she continues. "It's just that — you will _always _be apart of my life now, Tadashi. I loved — _love_ — you, and that doesn't just go away overnight. It's been a year since you died, and every waking moment has been a slice of hell. I miss you so much, you idiot. I miss you so much it hurts, and I know that I'm not alone. I know that you'd probably tell me what a fool I'm being now, that I should go get some help. You'd tell me that I should go talk to Hiro or even your aunt or Honey or anyone, because they're also going through it too. You'd tell me that I'm being selfish. Stupid."

She bobs her head. "But the thing is you idiot, is that they're not. I _loved _you, Tadashi. I loved you and I still love you and this kind of pain is why I was scared of this. I'm not good with emotion; I never have been and I never will be. Just — I'm miss you. I miss you and I wish you were here but you're not and it _hurts, _you jackass, it _hurts_." GoGo swallows. "But it's time for me to try and get over that. I'm not gonna forget you Tadashi, not ever, but I can't live with this type of pain anymore."

Bending down, GoGo lets the flowers fall from her trembling fingers. She's shaking all over now, and she can't stop.

"I love you," she murmurs. "I love you, Tadashi Hamada."

Her knees feel weak, so she puts a palm to the ground to steady herself. GoGo closes her eyes, and she _breathes. _

It feels good.

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><p>GoGo wanders around for a little while after that, stepping aimlessly through the streets. Everywhere she looks, there's a piece of <em>him<em>; the little cart that he'd drag her to for ice cream every day after working long hours in the lab. The coffee place that they'd shared their first drink at. Where he'd nearly hit her with his joke of a bike. Where she'd punched him for nearly hitting her with his joke of a bike.

Except — it hurts a little less now.

She felt lighter.

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><p><em>I wrote this because I felt like GoGo needed closure. She'll never forget Tadashi, but she couldn't go around bearing the weight of the world on her shoulders. It's hard to live like that, and GoGo is finally setting herself free.<em>

_See you next time._


End file.
